This archive report was first published on 7 October 2021.
On October 7, 2021, the Swedish Academy announced Tanzanian author Abdulrazak Gurnah as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, widely regarded as Africa's greatest author, has been a close contender for the prize for nearly a decade, alongside other renowned writers like Annie Ernaux, Haruki Murakami, and Margaret Atwood.
The Nobel panel recognized Gurnah for his 'uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.'
As the winner, Gurnah received a gold medal and a cash prize of Ksh114 million (approximately US$1.14 million).
According to the Swedish Academy, Gurnah's novels 'recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world.'
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who has lost the prize to Bob Dylan in 2016 and Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017, downplayed his loss in 2020, stating that he did not write his novels with the aim of bagging the prize.
